CES 2008 Photo Report

A Recap From HotHardware's News Page:  Ever since Lenovo took over IBM's mobile division, the company has produced a steady stream of ThinkPad-branded notebooks, that fit essentially the same mold.  ThinkPads have been highly regarded almost as the defacto notebook of choice for corporate or professional types, but they didn't always appeal to mass market, mainstream consumers or enthusiasts.  At this year's CES however, Lenovo showed off a trio of notebooks designed to do just that.

Lenovo's IdeaPad line of mobile computers is comprised of products ranging from a sleek, ultra light 11.1" designer notebook, to a beefy 17" DTR model with options that cater strictly to hardcore gamers.  This new line of IdeaPads takes some of the features that made ThinkPads so popular, like high quality keyboards and an active protection system that parks the notebook's hard drive in case of a fall, and adds new finishes and features for mainstream consumers.

We had a chance to play with Lenovo's Y710, Y510, U110 IdeaPads yesterday and wanted to share our experiences with you all as soon as possible.  These are some slick notebooks that are sure to turn heads.

      
IdeaPad U110 Ultraportable

Of the three new Lenovo products we saw, the U110 was probably the most stylish.  The unit comes in two colors; what we would call a sort of candy apple red and also in black.  There's a super-swank embossed finish on the machine, with a matching red, lighted display above the keyboard area and even similar cut trimmings for vent grills on the backside of the unit.  The unit's screen has a glossy glass finish that looked crisp and clean.  The U110 weighs in at a svelt 2.3 pounds and is .7 inches thin; tiny and tasty to be sure.

     
IdeaPad Y510

The Y510 is Lenovo's new utility player with a 15.4" widescreen LCD and a really nice textured "linen-like" top cover finish that is virtually fingerprint proof.  Then came the real showstopper for us, the attractive demostration lady that was showing off the unit to us, placed her pretty face in front of the system's integrated web cam and the system then logged her on in what was the first face recognition system demonstration we've seen on a production model notebook to date.  One word - impressive.  The Y510 is built with a Core 2 Duo T5550 processor at 1.83GHz and integrated Intel Media Accelerator X3100 graphics, along with a 250GB 5400RPM hard drive and 2GB of PC2-5300 DDR667 memory.  The unit weighs 7.9lbs and has a battery life of approximately 4 hours.

      
IdeaPad Y710 For Enthusiast/DTR

Finally, the bad boy of the bunch is Lenovo's Y710 desktop replacement model.  Built on an Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 2.5GHz processor with ATI Mobility radeon HD2600 graphics (256MB), this system should have a fair degree of gaming horsepower under its hood.  The machine also sports a 500GB 5400 RPM hard drive. The system has a "halo" lighting system adorning the top cover and Lenovo logo and also has a section of its keyboard area designated as its "Game Zone".   The Lenovo Y710's Game Zone has four over-sized directional buttons, four user-customizable option buttons and a small display that shows system information such as CPU speed, date and time.  Game Zone also has a performance control switch that allows users the ability to automatically overclock the CPU or activate a quiet mode with energy savings.  Lastly, as you'll see in the middle shot above, the Y710 comes with a 5.1 speaker system including a subwoofer located on the underbelly of the machine.   Baby's got game and beats, or so it would seem.

We'll have more CES coverage for you in the days ahead, including full reviews of these new Lenovo notebooks in the not so distant future as well.